Natividad Medical Center has won the recommendation to be the county's first Level II trauma center. / The Salinas Californian

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Two publicly affiliated hospitals, elected supervisors conducting the public’s business and contracts involving the public’s money were insufficient reasons to release the findings that earned Natividad Medical Center the designation Tuesday as Monterey County’s first Level II trauma center.

In fact, supervisors themselves were kept in the dark until right before the meeting when a tersely worded staff report indicated that an independent group of evaluators chose county-owned, safety-net hospital Natividad over public district Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital via an undisclosed ranking system.

She, too, would not disclose details of the merits, or lack of merits, of the two hospitals from the perspective of the evaluation team, which was composed of trauma doctors, nurses and administrators, possibly from out of state to negate any risk of having a conflict of interest. She said disclosing the reasons would be a “disservice to the public and hinder the county” in its upcoming contract negotiations (called a memorandum of understanding) with Natividad. An MOU can be thought of as a bare-bones legal contract.

Blitch provided an analogy of an apple buyer (the county) and two bidders (the hospitals). If one bidder discovered that half the apples of its competitor were rotten, then there would be “no incentive” for the remaining bidder to offer much in the way of services to the county, she said.

An attempt to seek a comment from Supervisor Lou Calcagno following the board of supervisors meeting was interrupted by County Counsel Charles McKee, who insisted the information will remain out of the public’s purview until either a memorandum of understanding is signed by the county and Natividad, or Natividad is officially designated as the new trauma center.

Either of those actions would keep the public in the dark about why Natividad was chosen over SVMH for anywhere from a few months to an entire year.

The action the board took Tuesday was to offer Natividad “the opportunity for designation.” The designation, providing Natividad meets all the required criteria, including a signed MOU, will come in December 2014 followed by a January 2015 trauma center start-up.